Actually, it won't matter for a long time yet. You can currently run two 8800gt's in sli mode and only use about half of the available bandwidth in pcie 1.0. There's nothing hardware or software wise for gaming that can even push pcie 1.0 to its max yet.
If you are going single vid card and intel processor...(or like crossfire for some reason) get a mobo with the intel x38 chipset.
If you want to run an nvidia sli configuration, get the 680i chipset.
nvidia's 780i chipset(with pcie 2.0 support) isn't out yet, but its kind of jerry rigged and is really more like pcie 1.5 than a true pcie 2.0 support.
Actually, it won't matter for a long time yet. You can currently run two 8800gt's in sli mode and only use about half of the available bandwidth in pcie 1.0. There's nothing hardware or software wise for gaming that can even push pcie 1.0 to its max yet. If you are going single vid card and intel processor...(or like crossfire for some reason) get a mobo with the intel x38 chipset. If you want to run an nvidia sli configuration, get the 680i chipset. nvidia's 780i chipset(with pcie 2.0 support) isn't out yet, but its kind of jerry rigged and is really more like pcie 1.5 than a true pcie 2.0 support. That's my 2 cents. D.
Um.... there is nothing wrong with crossfire at all.
In fact, crossfire scales significantly better than SLI.
Plus x38 chipsets are kind of expensive at the moment. I would look for a p35 chipset instead if you are not going to do crossfire or SLI.
-------------------------------- Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The crossfire itself may be working better now than it was, but it's not better than sli, and ATI cards are still underwhelming everyone. Maybe next year they'll pull their heads out of their arses.
I agree with the p5 board if you're only gonna run one card.
Personally, even running one card, I'd probably get the dual card board for cheaper upgrades. (cheaper to add another card at same level you have now i.e. add another 8800gt rather than buy a new 9000 series down the road.)
The crossfire itself may be working better now than it was, but it's not better than sli, and ATI cards are still underwhelming everyone. Maybe next year they'll pull their heads out of their arses. I agree with the p5 board if you're only gonna run one card.
Personally, even running one card, I'd probably get the dual card board for cheaper upgrades. (cheaper to add another card at same level you have now i.e. add another 8800gt rather than buy a new 9000 series down the road.) D.
Actually crossfire scales better than SLI to the point where 3870s in crossfire is about the same as 8800GTs in SLI. This shows that crossfire has better scaling. Now if you are talking about how nvidia has more powerful cards then sure they do. Although I would keep me eyes on the 3870x2.
Here is the benchmark of 3870s in cross fire versus 8800GTs in SLI. (If you look at the other charts is it compares the scaling of single versus crossfired/SLIed cards too)
-------------------------------- Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The problem with the benchmarks is that it all depends on what they are using for the benchmarking.
extremetech does good tests, they will test all different resolutions and use a variety of new games and benchmark tests.
The funny thing about ATI and AMD right now...they seem to be half assing everything. If you look at ATI cards hardware wise...they should be kicking the crud out of nvidia...but they don't.
The new ATI cards were dissapointing. How do you put out your next gen card and do ALMOST as good as the competition? You should be trumping them...otherwise why even bother.
If you read all of the documentation it actually says the 3870 scaling is broken at higher levels. I will give them that they did better on oblivion with a single card. They'll get it right eventually, and honestly I can't wait. I really don't want to see nvidia run without real competition.
The ati downfall is the catalyst drivers. When they get those right they might give nvidia a good run.
D.
p.s. excuse any discrepancies..I'm at work and it took me an hour to write this post. Needless to say my train of thought got derailed a few times, so if any of this makes no sense or is wrong I apologize.
The problem with the benchmarks is that it all depends on what they are using for the benchmarking. extremetech does good tests, they will test all different resolutions and use a variety of new games and benchmark tests. The funny thing about ATI and AMD right now...they seem to be half assing everything. If you look at ATI cards hardware wise...they should be kicking the crud out of nvidia...but they don't. The new ATI cards were dissapointing. How do you put out your next gen card and do ALMOST as good as the competition? You should be trumping them...otherwise why even bother. http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/15/amd_radeon_hd_3800/page9.html http://www.tgdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=34861 If you read all of the documentation it actually says the 3870 scaling is broken at higher levels. I will give them that they did better on oblivion with a single card. They'll get it right eventually, and honestly I can't wait. I really don't want to see nvidia run without real competition. The ati downfall is the catalyst drivers. When they get those right they might give nvidia a good run.
D. p.s. excuse any discrepancies..I'm at work and it took me an hour to write this post. Needless to say my train of thought got derailed a few times, so if any of this makes no sense or is wrong I apologize.
Well it all depends on what resolution hes running and how much his budget is...
He said hes going to build it in about 3 months time. By that time who knows what ATI drivers will be like and ATI will have a new high end card out.
RIght now though the 3870s are not bad cards, they weren't meant to compete in the high end market, just with the 8600GTS and 8800GT which they do fairly well at.
I am just saying, crossfire isn't a bad choice right now. I never said nvidia didn't have more powerful cards because they do.
Edit - Reading the tgdaily article it even says the 3850 and 3870 offer the "best bang for your buck" in their price ranges. It also says crossfire does scale better than SLI, so I don't see any reason why those cards and crossfire are not viable choices...
-------------------------------- Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The crossfire itself may be working better now than it was, but it's not better than sli, and ATI cards are still underwhelming everyone. Maybe next year they'll pull their heads out of their arses. I agree with the p5 board if you're only gonna run one card.
Personally, even running one card, I'd probably get the dual card board for cheaper upgrades. (cheaper to add another card at same level you have now i.e. add another 8800gt rather than buy a new 9000 series down the road.) D.
Actually crossfire scales better than SLI to the point where 3870s in crossfire is about the same as 8800GTs in SLI. This shows that crossfire has better scaling. Now if you are talking about how nvidia has more powerful cards then sure they do. Although I would keep me eyes on the 3870x2.
Here is the benchmark of 3870s in cross fire versus 8800GTs in SLI. (If you look at the other charts is it compares the scaling of single versus crossfired/SLIed cards too)
2.0 has a faster transfer speed then normal pci-e. If you want really high frame rate at really high resolution then its kinda a necessity.
Wrong. Getting 2.0 will not have any impact in performance. If you use a 2.0 compliant PCIE video card and a 1.0 8800gtx card single slot, you will not have any performance edge over 2.0. The motherboards are not using all that bandwidth yet and probably will not for years to come.
2.0 is just a gimmick like all things start out to be. In fact if your using a high end rig now and upgraded to a 2.0 motherboard with a 2.0 video card comparable to the 1.0 you will not see any benchmark improvements in FPS.
That review thats talking about the ATI cards scaling better is chinese...that's why it sounds so funky. It also said the ATI cards scaling was broken at higher resolutions due to catalyst issues.
Howcome after all these years ATI still puts out crap drivers?
ATI cards are viable, definitely, I just don't like them, too many weird issues with them over the years. Nvidia is much more consistent.
If you want low end or midgrade graphics, they are a good value, but your comp will be out dated in 6 months and you'll be upgrading again.
Those cards ATI JUST put out are ALMOST as good or just a little better than nvidia's old crap.
I'd buy nvidia or wait for the next crop of ATI cards coming out in the relative near future.
Just my 2 cents....and man...did we steal this thread...it was suppose to be about motherboards...oops.
The 2.0 has its uses not only for being future proof, but also for the 4x vid card setup. Right now ATI 4x doesn't work, but it scales better then Nvidia. The performance drop in crossfire is only 17%, in SLI its much higher. Also Nvidias 4x system doesn't actually work, much like ATIs system right now.
Also loading areas with 2.0 will be faster. With 1.1 you transfer at 4GB/s, with 2.0 you will transfer at 8GB/s. Although considering that SATA2 only transfers at 3GB/s, its effect is only notice when you are running a system in RAID or using a faster transfer method.
The rescently released ATI cards for consumer grade Vid cards are right behind the GT, GTX, Ultra. A little disappointing ya, but when you take into consideration that you can buy 2 ATI HD3870's and put them into crossfire; they will outperform an 8800 ultra and cost less... Also the 3890 isn't on the market yet, but its possible to uneven crossfire the HD3xxx series with maybe a 3890 and a 3870, which is another awesome advantage. Then ontop of this the cards will perform better in 3 more months as the drivers get better as with all ATI products. The 8800 GT is just re-using old drivers because it runs on the same tech.
The 2.0 has its uses not only for being future proof, but also for the 4x vid card setup. Right now ATI 4x doesn't work, but it scales better then Nvidia. The performance drop in crossfire is only 17%, in SLI its much higher. Also Nvidias 4x system doesn't actually work, much like ATIs system right now. Also loading areas with 2.0 will be faster. With 1.1 you transfer at 4GB/s, with 2.0 you will transfer at 8GB/s. Although considering that SATA2 only transfers at 3GB/s, its effect is only notice when you are running a system in RAID or using a faster transfer method. The rescently released ATI cards for consumer grade Vid cards are right behind the GT, GTX, Ultra. A little disappointing ya, but when you take into consideration that you can buy 2 ATI HD3870's and put them into crossfire; they will outperform an 8800 ultra and cost less... Also the 3890 isn't on the market yet, but its possible to uneven crossfire the HD3xxx series with maybe a 3890 and a 3870, which is another awesome advantage. Then ontop of this the cards will perform better in 3 more months as the drivers get better as with all ATI products. The 8800 GT is just re-using old drivers because it runs on the same tech.
No card out right now can take advantage of 2.0, so it doesn't really matter for anything right now even at really high resolutions.
-------------------------------- Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The advantage is there, I already pointed it out. It will load stuff from the HD into the Video Card twice as fast for half the load time. But you need to be in RAID to even go fast enough for this.
Comments
2.0 has a faster transfer speed then normal pci-e. If you want really high frame rate at really high resolution then its kinda a necessity.
Thx
Actually, it won't matter for a long time yet. You can currently run two 8800gt's in sli mode and only use about half of the available bandwidth in pcie 1.0. There's nothing hardware or software wise for gaming that can even push pcie 1.0 to its max yet.
If you are going single vid card and intel processor...(or like crossfire for some reason) get a mobo with the intel x38 chipset.
If you want to run an nvidia sli configuration, get the 680i chipset.
nvidia's 780i chipset(with pcie 2.0 support) isn't out yet, but its kind of jerry rigged and is really more like pcie 1.5 than a true pcie 2.0 support.
That's my 2 cents.
D.
In fact, crossfire scales significantly better than SLI.
Plus x38 chipsets are kind of expensive at the moment. I would look for a p35 chipset instead if you are not going to do crossfire or SLI.
--------------------------------
Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The crossfire itself may be working better now than it was, but it's not better than sli, and ATI cards are still underwhelming everyone. Maybe next year they'll pull their heads out of their arses.
I agree with the p5 board if you're only gonna run one card.
Personally, even running one card, I'd probably get the dual card board for cheaper upgrades. (cheaper to add another card at same level you have now i.e. add another 8800gt rather than buy a new 9000 series down the road.)
D.
Actually crossfire scales better than SLI to the point where 3870s in crossfire is about the same as 8800GTs in SLI. This shows that crossfire has better scaling. Now if you are talking about how nvidia has more powerful cards then sure they do. Although I would keep me eyes on the 3870x2.
Here is the benchmark of 3870s in cross fire versus 8800GTs in SLI. (If you look at the other charts is it compares the scaling of single versus crossfired/SLIed cards too)
en.expreview.com/
--------------------------------
Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The problem with the benchmarks is that it all depends on what they are using for the benchmarking.
extremetech does good tests, they will test all different resolutions and use a variety of new games and benchmark tests.
The funny thing about ATI and AMD right now...they seem to be half assing everything. If you look at ATI cards hardware wise...they should be kicking the crud out of nvidia...but they don't.
The new ATI cards were dissapointing. How do you put out your next gen card and do ALMOST as good as the competition? You should be trumping them...otherwise why even bother.
http://www.tomshardware.com/2007/11/15/amd_radeon_hd_3800/page9.html
http://www.tgdaily.com/index2.php?option=com_content&do_pdf=1&id=34861
If you read all of the documentation it actually says the 3870 scaling is broken at higher levels. I will give them that they did better on oblivion with a single card. They'll get it right eventually, and honestly I can't wait. I really don't want to see nvidia run without real competition.
The ati downfall is the catalyst drivers. When they get those right they might give nvidia a good run.
D.
p.s. excuse any discrepancies..I'm at work and it took me an hour to write this post. Needless to say my train of thought got derailed a few times, so if any of this makes no sense or is wrong I apologize.
Well it all depends on what resolution hes running and how much his budget is...
He said hes going to build it in about 3 months time. By that time who knows what ATI drivers will be like and ATI will have a new high end card out.
RIght now though the 3870s are not bad cards, they weren't meant to compete in the high end market, just with the 8600GTS and 8800GT which they do fairly well at.
I am just saying, crossfire isn't a bad choice right now. I never said nvidia didn't have more powerful cards because they do.
Edit - Reading the tgdaily article it even says the 3850 and 3870 offer the "best bang for your buck" in their price ranges. It also says crossfire does scale better than SLI, so I don't see any reason why those cards and crossfire are not viable choices...
--------------------------------
Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
Actually crossfire scales better than SLI to the point where 3870s in crossfire is about the same as 8800GTs in SLI. This shows that crossfire has better scaling. Now if you are talking about how nvidia has more powerful cards then sure they do. Although I would keep me eyes on the 3870x2.
Here is the benchmark of 3870s in cross fire versus 8800GTs in SLI. (If you look at the other charts is it compares the scaling of single versus crossfired/SLIed cards too)
en.expreview.com/
"From the test result we can notice in more than 90% items, Crossfire scale more better than SLI."
scales more better huh ?
this kinda threw off the entire review to me.
*edit*
hehehe. scratch that, reading the rest of the review it looks like it's been translated.
____________________________
TheCore
2.0 is just a gimmick like all things start out to be. In fact if your using a high end rig now and upgraded to a 2.0 motherboard with a 2.0 video card comparable to the 1.0 you will not see any benchmark improvements in FPS.
That review thats talking about the ATI cards scaling better is chinese...that's why it sounds so funky. It also said the ATI cards scaling was broken at higher resolutions due to catalyst issues.
Howcome after all these years ATI still puts out crap drivers?
ATI cards are viable, definitely, I just don't like them, too many weird issues with them over the years. Nvidia is much more consistent.
If you want low end or midgrade graphics, they are a good value, but your comp will be out dated in 6 months and you'll be upgrading again.
Those cards ATI JUST put out are ALMOST as good or just a little better than nvidia's old crap.
I'd buy nvidia or wait for the next crop of ATI cards coming out in the relative near future.
Just my 2 cents....and man...did we steal this thread...it was suppose to be about motherboards...oops.
D.
The 2.0 has its uses not only for being future proof, but also for the 4x vid card setup. Right now ATI 4x doesn't work, but it scales better then Nvidia. The performance drop in crossfire is only 17%, in SLI its much higher. Also Nvidias 4x system doesn't actually work, much like ATIs system right now.
Also loading areas with 2.0 will be faster. With 1.1 you transfer at 4GB/s, with 2.0 you will transfer at 8GB/s. Although considering that SATA2 only transfers at 3GB/s, its effect is only notice when you are running a system in RAID or using a faster transfer method.
The rescently released ATI cards for consumer grade Vid cards are right behind the GT, GTX, Ultra. A little disappointing ya, but when you take into consideration that you can buy 2 ATI HD3870's and put them into crossfire; they will outperform an 8800 ultra and cost less... Also the 3890 isn't on the market yet, but its possible to uneven crossfire the HD3xxx series with maybe a 3890 and a 3870, which is another awesome advantage. Then ontop of this the cards will perform better in 3 more months as the drivers get better as with all ATI products. The 8800 GT is just re-using old drivers because it runs on the same tech.
No card out right now can take advantage of 2.0, so it doesn't really matter for anything right now even at really high resolutions.
--------------------------------
Desktop - AMD 8450 Tri Core, 3 gigs of DDR2 800 RAM, ATI HD 3200 Graphics, Windows Vista Home Premium 64-bit
Laptop (Dell Latitude E6400) - Intel P8400, 2 GIGs of RAM, Intel X4500, Windows XP Professional
The advantage is there, I already pointed it out. It will load stuff from the HD into the Video Card twice as fast for half the load time. But you need to be in RAID to even go fast enough for this.